Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
In a film about a fictional version of Regency England.
While Cillian himself was from an offshoot of an English colony with its own self-declared monarchy.
…truth really was stranger than fiction.
Brendan lay on his side in bed, watching the Los Angeles skyline and listening to the whispers at his back. Cillian. On the phone with someone, apparently his mother from the few bits Brendan overheard. Cillian paced a few feet away from the bed, his voice urgent and cracking, then resigned. Even if he couldn’t understand the words, Brendan felt like he was overhearing something he wasn’t meant to hear, and so he simply held still and let Cillian think he was asleep.
He couldn’t stand being this uneasy.
Couldn’t stand the feeling that he stood on the edge of a cliff, the ground shorn away ahead of him by the understanding of exactly the position Cillian was in; exactly why he felt he had to honor his commitments to his family.
Exactly why he really did intend to quit acting, at whatever nebulous point in the future his teacup monarchy pulled his strings to guide him back into place.
Exactly why this truly was as temporary as it was always intended to be.
One way or another, Cillian was leaving. Maybe not now, but…
One day.
What did it matter? This was a fling for practical purposes; finite by its very nature. A smokescreen paired with mutual gratification. If it hadn’t run its course before filming ended, it would have cut off when production wrapped and there was neither a need for protection from Newcomb, nor a need for he and Cillian to see each other anymore. They’d move on from each other, and that was that.
…that was that.
The sound of Cillian’s rough, ragged breath pulled Brendan from his thoughts—and he couldn’t resist looking back, glancing over his shoulder. Cillian stood quiet in the moonlight and lampglow, this raw-built thing who should be all bones and awkwardness and ropy muscle everywhere and yet the way he came together made him a thing of rough-stroke artistry drawn in erratic lines of chalk and charcoal, light and shadow…
…resignation and pain.
He stared blankly at nothing, phone clutched to his ear, his other arm hugged against his bare chest. “Ah,” he said softly. “…yes. Of course, Mum. I…yes. That’s…that’s fine. I’ll do that.” He paused, eyes closing. “Love you too.”
He dropped his arm limply, then, tilting his head back, staring up, his expression so absolutely wretched that Brendan could no longer ignore its pull. He sat up, reaching one hand across the bed.
“Cillian…?”
Cillian jerked as if he’d been struck, glimmering eyes darting toward Brendan before he offered a strange smile, a brave smile, a smile that oddly hurt to see.
“Sorry,” Cillian said, and sank down to sit on the bed, fingers spreading across the sheets to slip between Brendan’s. “Did I wake you?”
“I wasn’t sleeping well anyway.” Brendan searched Cillian’s face. “Everything all right?”
“Mm. Just taking care of arrangements with Mum. Time zones, and…you know.” His voice shook a little, before that smile returned, aching and rough. “Everything’s fine.”
Everything was not fine.
But Brendan didn’t know what to do.
So he only coaxed a tense, wordless Cillian back into his arms, and lay back against the pillows while neither of them slept at all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BRENDAN HAD NEVER BEEN PARTICULARLY fond of the cold.
But he was finding that he’d never known cold like the cold of ice-sheeted ocean water spraying up over the bow of a slow-moving ferry and scattering in a frigid razorblade wind, as the muted blurry line of the island on the horizon came clear up ahead.
Just getting here alone had been interesting. A flight to Norway, a train to the coast, and now a ferry out to the island and nation of Sclata. It felt like every leg of the trip had grown colder and colder until Brendan was wrapped in layers up to his nose, double scarfs wound around his face and his thick coat layered on top of another thick coat. At his left, he couldn’t even see Drake under his multiple quilted jackets. The rest of the crew huddled inside the ferry’s cabin, shivering, while Newcomb had claimed a private room with interior heating.
While at his right, Cillian wore nothing but his usual jeans, loose ripped shirt, and battered jacket, standing at the railing with the wind fingering his hair and blowing over him as if he didn’t even feel the scouring chill.
Brendan didn’t know how Cillian hadn’t melted in the Los Angeles heat.
He lingered on the pensive air haunting Cillian’s face; he’d been withdrawn since the entire production crew had launched into last-minute preparations for a change in travel plans—speaking little, often drifting into the distance or just attaching himself to Brendan’s side and hiding there. Now he watched the encroaching island with a distant, introspective gaze, thick lashes lowered, his lips parted as if he might say something and yet…